Apart from the theory of man’s absolute depravity and lack of free-will there are other things which are damaging to Luther’s doctrine of original sin, particularly his opinion that original sin persists after baptism.
“The doctrine of original sin as taught by the olden Church,” says Harnack, “was amended by Luther and made to agree with his own principles,” but it was against his principles “to make of such things articles of faith. His own sense of sin and the need he felt of pacifying his conscience occupied in it so large a place that he transformed what was in reality a piece of Christian self-judgment into an historical fact of universal appliance concerning the beginnings of the human race.” At any rate Luther’s exaggeration of the impotence of fallen man served “as a ground of excuse for our own guilt.”[1774]
As regards his doctrine of the Law and the Gospel; Luther hoped, by contrasting it with the Gospel, to bring the Law into prominence. By the Law he understood the sum-total of what was commanded not merely in the Old but also in the New Testament; the teaching of the Gospel, on the other hand, contained only consoling thoughts on the fulfilment of the Law by Christ and the appropriation of Christ’s merits by faith.[1775]
“Plain as it is,” says Harnack, “what Luther really desired by his distinction between the Law and the Gospel, still, coming to details, we find that the Reformer’s statements do not always agree. Thus it is partly left to our own private judgment to select those utterances which we consider more important; Luther himself nevertheless gives the preference to certain ideas which in perpetuum invest the Law with a peculiar independent significance. Is it not, however, our duty to depict the Reformer in accordance with his most original ideas?”[1776]
Such an “original” idea is that of the abrogation of the Law for the Christian who is really redeemed and who voluntarily and without compulsion leaves faith to express itself in action. “Certainty of the abrogation of the Law constitutes a certain demand which can be met only in one way.” Luther carries the paradox so far as to say: The Law is given to be broken. And yet ... Luther ever cherishes the “assumption that the Law is the expression of God’s immutable will, and, in this sense, has its own enduring sphere of action side by side with the Gospel, as though the Will of God were not implicitly contained in the latter. But this admission involved a place being found for the Law even in Christianity.” Of this difficulty Luther was perfectly conscious, but he was deft enough in circumventing it. “The Law qua lex is undoubtedly abrogated for the Christian; whoever tries to act up to the Law must needs go to hell; but in God’s sight it still holds good, i.e. God’s Will remains expressed therein and He must watch over its fulfilment.” If the law is not fulfilled God must demand penance.[1777]
In the question of penance we again see Luther assume an attitude which is, as a matter of fact, subversive of his own doctrine. His ideas on this point are so contradictory that Protestant writers on dogma have not been able to agree in their accounts, and needless to say, still less in their judgments.
Alfred Galley, one of the most recent writers on “Luther’s doctrine of penance,” admits: “The various attempts made to solve the matter have so far yielded no satisfactory result.”[1778] And yet for ten years Lipsius, Herrmann and others had been carefully exploring this central point of Luther’s practical theology. Galley’s own efforts, kindly disposed as he is to Luther, and in spite of his mastery of the texts, have not as yet rallied other theologians to his opinion.
Luther’s original doctrine of Penance, to which frequent allusion has already been made, started, according to Loofs, (1906) with the assumption that contrition is produced solely by the “love of righteousness,” and that true penance “does not come from the Law,” because the latter does nothing but “kill, curse, render guilty and pronounce judgment”; penance produced by the Law led only to hypocrisy. “Thus, before one has faith, to think of sin and of the Law is harmful.” Luther, however, gradually acquiesced in the modifications introduced by Melanchthon in favour of the Law and of that sorrow which arises from the thought of the penalties. That “Luther to a certain extent adopted Melanchthon’s ideas on penance is still more apparent in the Antinomian controversy [1537-1540],” yet the ideas of his opponent, Agricola, bore some “resemblance” to “Luther’s earlier ideas” on Christian penance.[1779]
As for Harnack, he emphasises the confusion which arose in the Lutheran theology owing to Luther’s illogical attitude towards so eminently practical a question as the doctrine of penance; even during Luther’s lifetime the doctrine of penance had been a real “labyrinth.” “Here too,” says Harnack, “Luther himself took the lead, and then quietly winked at what was contrary to his own early principles, which, moreover, he had never retracted. That the mediaeval Catholic view had its after effect on him ought not to be denied.” “He was convinced that faith works penance, the ‘dying daily,’ which indeed is but the negative side of faith,” and that “only such penance as comes from faith [from the Gospel] is of value in God’s sight.... This is certainly a view which may easily grow into its dreadful opposite, viz. the comfortable presuming on salvation.... If people are told that they must always be performing penance, and that particular acts of penance are of no avail, few will ever have recourse to penance at all.”[1780]